Saturday, 24 May 2008

In less than 24 hours from the time I post this blog entry, NASA's Phoenix Lander will attempt to land on Mars. I've posted a forum thread with the details and my opinion of why this is the best type of reality TV going. I strongly recommend tuning in to NASA TV and watching this - it's gripping drama that you don't get to see very often.

Wednesday, 26 March 2008

California company Xcor Aerospace plans to enter the space tourism industry with a two-seat rocket ship capable of suborbital flights. Named Lynx, the vehicle is about the size of a small private plane and is expected to begin flying in 2010.

Sunday, 16 March 2008

I've uploaded more photos from STS-123, plus a new section: Astronauts in Action. It's brand new (not many photos yet) but I imagine this section being huge one day. I'm even going to try and build a database of photos of all astronauts that have flown in space. I don't really know if it's practical but it's worth a try. Maybe I'll limit it to "pioneering astronauts" or something like that.

Friday, 29 February 2008

I've finally uploaded the rest of the images from the Space Shuttle STS-120 and STS-122 missions. I've also started accumulating enough Shuttle images to start organizing them into categories such as launch, landing, etc. It's still early days but I think the site is starting to take shape.

I have to say I'm a bit bummed at how long it's taking me to add new images using the very manual system I've chosen for this site. I made a decision to use plain HTML pages and do all the work on the images by hand, rather than using a gallery script like I did at space-photos.com. My reasoning was that although it would take longer to publish new material, the resulting pages would be more permanent, robust and SEO-friendly. Also, it's quite a hassle staying up to date with PHP scripts. I still think I made the right decision but it's harder work than I anticipated.

Friday, 22 February 2008

I was quite surprised (and pleased) at how much media coverage the US satellite shooting received. The video below is a worthwhile analysis by respected commentator Phil Plait (badastronomy.com).

For the first 3 1/2 minutes Phil explains the shooting and gives his overall opinion. At about 5 minutes he discusses the difference between this and the Chinese satellite shooting last year. A recap is given at 8.11.

Tuesday, 12 February 2008

Columbus has now been attached to the International Space Station. You can see a 28-minute video of the installation EVA (spacewalk) here. Tomorrow Columbus will be opened and astronauts will enter the module from inside the station to begin outfitting.

Thursday, 7 February 2008

At last the European Space Agency's Columbia module is on the way to the space station. This is the first significant scientific addition to the station in years. It's going to be a great mission and I'll definitely be glued to NASA TV.

Wednesday, 6 February 2008

People who know me well, know that I have a minor obsession with space. I've never grown up really. I still like to play with toy spacehips and pretend I'm Luke Skywalker.

My website porfolio wouldn't be complete without a space-related site or two, so I made six to be safe. Most of them are devoted to hosting space images and videos: www.space-video.info, www.space-images.info, www.space-photos.com and www.space-images.com. I've also got www.seti.co.nz which is the base for my SETI@home team, and of course the old space area of my personal website. If this looks like domain-hoarding to you, well, I don't have a good defence. I don't need this many space domains but I keep acquiring them like my grandmother keeps acquiring new kitchen gadgets. I just can't stop myself.

At this stage my plan is to work mostly on www.space-images.com. The other sites will serve largely as test sites for the MC Media Player project although I'll obviously try and keep them genuine and useful as well.

There's lots of cool stuff happening in the world of space. As well as using this blog topic to report updates on my space websites, I might try and slip in a few comments on space news and developments as well.